The word Storytelling seems to be in common usage these days in reviews, writings and blog postings about Jazz, yet what does it really mean?

Reasoning by analogy is dotted with pitfalls, but in a narrative, written form, storytelling denotes an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment with a beginning-middle-end progression.

So by analogy, storytelling in Jazz refers to an improvisation which provides the listener with a coherent expression of melodic phrases which similarly evolve through a starting point, expansion and conclusion, although in this case, the ear is the primary sense rather than the eye.

One of the accounts in the Jazz literature of how of Jazz soloists actually develop their storytelling abilities is contained in the following excerpts from Paul F. Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation:

Taken as a whole, I’ve always considered the half dozen tracks that make up Julian “Cannonball” Adderley’s Blue Note recording Somethin’ Else [CDP 7 46338 2]to be one of the best expressions of storytelling in Jazz ever recorded. Thanks to the audio-visual efforts of Federico Zecca, you can listen to it in its entirety at the conclusion of this piece.

The recording gets its name from Miles’ reference to Cannonball as being …. Somethin’ Else … words of high praise in Jazz parlances. This 1958 LP also has the distinction of representing the last time that Miles recorded as a sideman.

“In part, the metaphor of storytelling suggests the dramatic molding of creations to include movement through successive events "transcending" particular repetitive, formal aspects of the composition and featuring distinct types of musical material.

For early jazz players like Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, and for swing players like Lester Young, storytelling commonly involved such designs for multiple choruses as devoting an initial chorus to interpreting a piece's melody, devoting the next to expressive liberties varying it, and then returning to the melody or proceeding on to other events such as single-note riffing patterns.

For contemporary players, who may place less emphasis on the melody, the considerations of shaping remain just as essential. Typically, when it comes time for Buster Williams to solo, he "wants to tell a story, and the best way to tell a story is to set it up." If someone who is "very excited about something that just happened" comes running to Williams "saying, 'Buster, blah-blah-Mah-blah,' the first thing I'm going to say is, 'Look, wait a minute. Calm down and start from the beginning.'" Williams's plan is the same for solo work. "Start from the beginning," he advises. "It's also like playing a game of chess. There's the beginning game, the middle game, and then there's the end game. Miles is a champion at doing that. So is Trane. To accomplish this, the use of space is very important—sparseness and simplicity—maybe playing just short, meaningful phrases at first and building up the solo from there."

Similarly, [pianist] Kenny Barron tries "to start the solo in a way that's sparse or low key" so that he has "somewhere to go, so that the solo can build." From listening to Dizzy Gillespie when he performed in Gillespie's band, Barron earned how to "save" himself in his playing. "You don't have to play everything you know every minute," Barron says.

You can leave some spaces in the music. You're not going to start off a solo double-timing. You start off just playing very simply and, as much as possible, with lyrical ideas. And as the intensity builds, if it does, your ideas can become a little more complicated. They can become longer. The way I look at it is that you're going to start down so that you have somewhere to go. It can build to different points in different parts of the solo. It's hills and valleys. That's what it is anywhere. There are certain sections of the tune which build harmonically and suggest that the intensity should also build at that particular point. That's a very natural thing to happen, and what you play will always build there. Other times, it's a matter of wherever it occurs, wherever you feel it coming. It could happen in different spots within the tune at different times.

A related feature of storytelling involves matters of continuity and cohesion. Paul Wertico advises his students that in initiating a solo they should think in terms of developing specific "characters and a plot. . . . You introduce these little different [musical] things that can be brought back out later on; and the way you put them together makes a little story. That can be [on the scale of] a sentence or a paragraph.. . . The real great cats can write novels." Wertico expresses admiration for the intellectual prowess of these players. Throughout a performance, they creatively juxtapose ideas that they introduced in their initial "character line," and at just "the right time" in their story, they can "pull out" and develop ideas that they "only hinted at" earlier in the performance but have borne in mind all along. "That's what's really fantastic about a solo," Wertico maintains.

To develop the skills of expert storytellers, artists find it essential to devote some practice time to improvising under conditions that simulate formal music events, thereby imposing maximum constraints upon performances. Negotiating a composition's structure as "one cohesive string," with each chord leading to the next in strict rhythm, they formulate complete solos, pausing but momentarily to reflect on their inventions. "To learn to play a song better," Art Farmer would "work on its chords, chorus after chorus, trying to play whatever came to mind. Even if it didn't come out right, I'd keep playing," he says. "At certain times, it's not good to stop."

Musicians commit themselves to the rigors of developing the ideas that occur to them at the moment, cultivating powers of concentration upon which larger-scale invention depends. "After a lot of practice, you find that the phrases just begin to fall in the right place," Harold Ousley recalls. "You are able to play a whole chorus of phrases together, and you are ready for the next chorus. The more you do it, the smoother and the easier it gets. When you begin to feel proficient at this, you feel a certain sense of freedom, and you get the inspiration to really get into your horn and to try out different things. There's a great excitement about that."

As Ousley's remarks imply, the improviser's world of imagination considers more than musical abstractions. Emotion serves as a partner to intellect in the conception and expansion of ideas. Beyond emotional responses to their evolving creations, artists speak generally of "tapping an emotional reservoir," whose "energy" represents a distillation of their experiences with life (Emily Remler). Roberta Baum considers emotion to be "the biggest part of singing. It has become an extension of how it is to be alive," she says. In this sense, performances can reflect the individual's characteristic scope of expression, including extreme fluctuations of feeling.

As alluded to earlier, artists can also draw upon the extramusical associations of the compositions that serve as vehicles. They sometimes set up for performances by dwelling momentarily on a piece's moods and meanings, recalling, perhaps, the sense of personal identification with the theme of a standard piece that prompted its incorporation into their repertory, or envisioning the characters and incidents depicted in their own original compositions. At times, Dexter Gordon actually sang a few lines of a ballad's lyrics to invoke its meaning, before switching to saxophone improvisations.26 With song texts, or in their absence, the emotional sentiment and the imagery suggested by titles and musical features also offer direction.

Overall, a piece's precise mood has a powerful tempering effect on improvisers, guiding their personal feelings to blend with those appropriate for the performance. For Arthur Rhames, " 'God Bless the Child' [evokes] one set of moods about the remorse of not being on your own or having to depend on others, while a tune like 'Giant Steps' may be about advancing yourself"; each provides "different perspectives, different feelings, different moods. And those moods govern a lot of what's going to come out in your interpretation of the chord changes in your improvising." Chuck Israels also routinely takes the mood of the piece into account when he prepares to solo. Over the course of an evening, "I'll play a tune like 'The Preacher' that has a certain gospel flavor; then a tune like Bill Evans's 'Peri's Scope,' which is an outgoing, dancing, lighthearted tune. [Next, I will] play something melancholy, like 'Nardis.'"

There is a constant spending and replenishment of a player's emotional reserves. Israels performs "tunes that have different emotional states" in order to give himself "different things to think about, different things to feel and to play" when he improvises. Each tune has "its own feelings, its own shapes and patterns that occupy me when I play it," he explains. "You just jump from one emotional mood to another because the moods change with each piece." Sometimes, Emily Remler says, "when I play a ballad like 'I'm in a Sentimental Mood,' I feel almost sick to my stomach because it is so heartrending and takes so much from me." A piece's emotional associations commonly influence an artist's rhythmic approach or selection of tonal materials, in the latter instance suggesting, perhaps, an emphasis upon blues-inflected melodies rather than brighter, un-inflected melodies or upon tense rather than relaxed harmonies.

Throughout the piece, artists may prepare themselves to respond to each of its varied nuances, beyond its most general tenor. Emily Remler, looking forward to "a gig tonight," knows "that there are sections where I'll feel a lot of different emotions. The [composition] breaks into a real happy part, and it makes me feel really happy. Then there are other parts where I'll just feel determined." In some instances, the elements of a piece combine to reinforce a particular emotional shape overall, suggesting that improvisers structure their own creations accordingly. In a blues, an artist may build toward peaks of intensity at the same point as the harmony and poetic text reach a dramatic climax.

Various aspects of the meanings of compositions are also tied to their performance histories, especially the ways in which earlier improvisers have handled their original compositions (Barry Harris). When Jimmy Robinson prepares to solo, he "thinks about the things that have been done on the tune in the past" and what he would "like to do on it." Of course, he says, if he has "never heard the tune before" or is performing his own pieces, he "just strikes out" on his own. If it is a recent piece by someone like Dizzy Gillespie, however, he wants "to know what Dizzy did on it just to give me an idea to start with, so I won't be too far off with it." Robinson's intention is to be respectful to "the idea" of the composer. "That also shows that I've been influenced by Dizzy," he says, "since he did some very intricate things on it that I wish I had come up with [he laughs]. You try to play in relationship to that to learn what he's doing, and then you try to build and improve on it."

Renowned artists have sometimes improvised so effectively within the framework of other composers' works, bringing fresh interpretations to them, that they leave an indelible mark upon the works' performance traditions and on those of pieces with comparable styles. Walter Bishop Jr. learned the general principles for formulating solos within modal compositions by analyzing Miles Davis's solos.

Another trumpeter admitted that after "Miles's playing on 'Sketches of Spain,' it is impossible to improvise on any Spanish-type piece without using some of Miles's inflections." A composition "like 'Nardis' also has a lot of connotation because Bill Evans played it so much," Fred Hersch observes. Along similar lines, even if Roberta Baum "were to give my own interpretation of a song by Cole Porter, there is no way that I could forget how Ella Fitzgerald had phrased something." A commemorative piece lends itself particularly to an interpretation imbued with the stylistic traits of the honored namesake. In rendering the ballad "I Remember Clifford," Lee Morgan integrates his own personal blues-oriented commentaries into the ballad's theme, at times adopting Clifford Brown's wide, singing vibrato, unique articulation devices, and characteristic embellishments. Sometimes, it is in the very act of improvising that players discover and pursue the deep connections that compositions and the individual styles of soloists reveal to them.

For improvisers, the meaning of a piece incorporates layers of nuance derived from intimacy with its imagery, its rhythmic and tonal associations, its performance history, and its relatives within the wider repertory of pieces. Among the myriad resources that soloists filter through their imaginations, one of the most striking is the vibrancy of the human connections that inhabit the piece—myriad inflections, personalities, voices, fingerings, and stances, coursing through the mind and into the musical performance. Such varied imagery informs and deepens every story in the telling. In a sense, each solo is like a tale within a tale, a personal account with ties of varying strength to the formal composition.

While absorbing the conventions associated with idea formulation and storytelling in the jazz tradition, artists place different emphases upon the conventions. They apply them uniquely according to each individual's temperament, personal style of jazz oratory, emotional response to compositions, and specific goals for the solo under formulation. As expected, the differing emphases result in correspondingly varied transformations of jazz vocabulary and in different formal characteristics among the solos produced by improvisation .

Underlying their efforts to achieve such diversity of expression is rigorous practice on the part of jazz learners, as they develop flexibility in the use of initially limited stores of vocabulary, devise a systematic way of relating vocabulary patterns one to another, and absorb the aesthetic principles that guide vocabulary usage.

Students with such comprehensive training are in a far better position as improvisers than are those among their counterparts who may have acquired a large store of vocabulary patterns, chords, scales, and the like, but yet fail to appreciate these other critical aspects of jazz knowledge. Ultimately, learning the tools and techniques of the art provides only the ground for the student's development.

To build the foundation, aspiring musicians must commit endless hours to practicing improvisation—mentally simulating the conditions of live performance events—if they are to acquire the cumulative experience upon which effective storytelling rests. Among the challenges practicers confront in their earliest efforts are improvisation's capricious aspects, which can operate as powerful forces to influence a work's musical outcome.”

Phil Woods 5tet Feat. Tom Harrell - "Azure"

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Celebrating the Legacy of Art Farmer 1928-1999

This year will be the 90th Birthday Anniversary of Art Farmer. We are pleased to announce that The Art Farmer Website is now live. Please click on the image of Art to be re-directed to his site replete with discography.

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Bassist Chuck Israels on alto saxophonist Phil Woods

Quincy Jones had a band that was preparing to tour Europe in the summer of 1959. The band was rehearsing in the mezzanine of the Olympia Theatre and I somehow wrangled an invitation to attend a rehearsal. It was a great hand with some of Quincy's friends from Seattle, like Buddy Catlett and Patti Brown. Les Spann was the guitarist and played some flute solos. Sahib Shihab was in the saxophone section and Joe Harris played drums. I listened to a number of pieces in which there were solos played by various members of the band. It would be unfair to say that those solos were perfunctory, but later, when Phil Woods stood up from the lead alto chair to play his solo feature, the atmosphere changed. Phil played as if there were no tomorrow. The contrast was striking and I have always remembered the impression it left. If you practice rehearsing, then when the lime comes to perform, you are ready to rehearse. Phil practiced performing.

Legendary 1980 Weckl-Gadd-Colaiuta DRUM SHOWDOWN

Larry Bunker's Advice to a Young Drum Student

"Be yourself, keep good time, play musically and don't show off your "chops" [technique]. The only people who can appreciate them are other drummers, and nobody likes them anyway."

JazzProfiles Readers Forum

You have done a great service by reproducing this article. Gene really created a great portrait of Miller, especially with his new (for the time) interviews.

I was a great admirer of Gene's writing, and can say we were friends. If you like, I can send you a link to a memorial article I wrote for Doug Ramsey's blog Rifftides that I wrote after Gene died. He could be quite frustrating at times, but I learned a lot from him, and he definitely helped me to become a better writer.

Hi. I have been visiting his blog for a few months almost daily and I have to thank him for his work, contributing interesting articles about music and Jazz musicians which is helping me discover new things, to value others that I did not appreciate at the time and to recover some that I enjoyed. and I have forgotten. -Greetings and many thanks from Toledo Spain.

Great write up of one helluva release by Bill Lichtenauer of Tantara Productions. Magnificent list, great technology, and fantastic Kenton sounds. Thanks Steve...and thanks, Bill. And the liner notes were done superbly by Michael Sparke of the UK. Tony Agostinelli

Thanks Steven for making this available to a wider readership. This book was like a "bible" to me when I first started collecting aged 16. I still have my original copy ... complete with marginalia as I filled in my collection. I had to wait until I moved to London in 1958 to acquire many of these albums on the British labels like Esquire .... this brings back so many pleasant memories, but it also reminds me that time does proceed, relentlessly.

Garth.

This book was like a "bible" to me when I was a serious collector, aged 16 .... I still have my original copy, in excellent condition after all these years, over three continents complete with marginalia as I built my collection. Bravo to you Steve for making these early observations available for others to read. Raymond Horricks followed this book up with "These Jazzmen Of Our Time" (Gollancz, 1959), which contained some great early portraits by Herman Leonard.

I met him twice. He was playing at a mall with the Westchester jazz band. That was around 97 or so. They were taking a break and I started talking to him. He was super nice. I mention my grandfather was a jazz trumpet player Bunny Berigan. I did not know who Bill was but like the way he played bass that day. I ran across his book on jazz in the white plains library. I was surprise at knowledge and who he played with in jazz. I seen him again at the same place a year later and got to talk to him.Very nice again to me. I asked him about Zoot Sims. And about Benny Goodman which he your with in Russian . My grandfather played with Benny too at one time. Seems they both found him hard to deal with. What a fine man Bill is.

I discovered Oliver Nelson in 1977 and could not believe my ears. At the time it was obviously a vinyl record and belonged to somebody else. However, thanks to the technology of today I can listen to my cd of Blues and the Abstract Truth to my heart's content. You have told me so much more about this wonderful man's unique style. If I want to feel good, I just listen to Stolen Moments. Thank you.

I have been listening to 1 of greatest piece of orchestration of Stan Kenton style music I've ever listened too arranged by a young trumpet player & arranger Bill Mathieu it's Kenton it Mathieu but mostly a great music . the complexed overlays , blending , fitting in soloists at just the right moment , plus the swelling of the whole orchestra to create the Kenton sound without losing his own indemnity is outstanding . Thank Bill Thank you Stan ... Jim Shelton

Peter Haslund has left a new comment on your post "Mark Murphy: 1932-2015, R.I.P.":

Just discovered Mr. Murphy. Gotta say it leaves me speechless that I listened to jazz since the 80s and never once heard his name. All the stuff that sounded so contrived with Sinatra (who obviously knew he was really singing black people's music) is fresh and free with Mark. RIP.

Hi Steven,

I read with interest your recent piece about the Boss Brass. I live in Toronto, and when it comes to the Canadian jazz scene, it's hard to overstate how influential this band was. Besides the quality of McConnell's arrangements, the musicians were all top-name guys in the city (many with vigorous solo careers). What has always floored me about their playing is the tightness and especially intonation in the woodwinds -- the skill of the horn players at playing doubles (flutes and clarinets) is legendary.

I feel fortunate to have been able to hear them live, on a number of occasions. From the stories I've heard, either third-hand or right from former Boss Brass members, Rob was a really hard guy to work with, but certainly pushed his group toward excellence.

I also liked your recent piece on Pat Martino. I'm a big fan of his style. If you haven't read his autobiography, I highly recommend it! His personal story is, of course, fascinating and inspiring.

Speaking of guitarists, someone you may want to profile someday is the Canadian jazz guitarist Ed Bickert. He was the guitarist for the Boss Brass for many decades. He is now quite elderly and no longer playing, but is another of those guys who was phenomenally influential, though I think he largely flew under-the-radar south of the border.

Thanks for putting together such a great site, and best wishes.

Jordan Wosnick

You can share your thoughts, observations and general remarks in the Readers Forum by contacting JazzProfiles via scerra@roadrunner.com

Hi Steve...I'm not a Facebook or Twitter guy so here's hoping this email reaches you...

You indicated that you were not aware of published Mulligan biographies in your recent post on Gerry and I wanted to bring one to your attention that I think you will like:

JERU'S JOURNEY by Sanford Josephson. It was published in 2015 by Hal Leonard Books. It's part of the Hal Leonard Biography Series which also includes bios of Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Mann & Billy Eckstine.

I own the Adderley and Mann bios and also recommend them.

Jeru's Journey is an easy read and covers Mulligan's life from birth to his passing. It is a very good overview and the author--who knew Mulligan and interviewed him before his passing--tells Gerry's story completely including Mulligan's drug addiction, domestic (wives) issues, etc. along with good musical analysis and insights both of the author's and other musicians. In addition to a good discography there are many photographs.

The list price is $19.99. A good buy.

In closing, I would like to tell you how much I have enjoyed your blog over the years. I have recommended it to many musician friends and all have thanked me. Thanks again for helping to keep the jazz alive...

Bruce Armstrong

You can share your thoughts, observations and general remarks in the Readers Forum by contacting JazzProfiles via scerra@roadrunner.com

Les Koenig was clearly a GIANT despite his obvious preference to be low-key, himself. THANK YOU, Steven Cerra!!! The world is a better place because of people like Les! Like Laurie(Pepper) & the list goes on & on forever! Like YOU, Steven! Thanks to ALL who work behind the scenes, on or off-stage, etc. etc. etc... -in support of the featured "Player" & "Sidemen" so that "We the people..." can be out in the audience having the time of our lives enjoying "the show" or "Artistry, Talent, Efforts" and so on! My attitude is one of gratitude!! THIS art form & ALL original American Art forms must be preserved and encouraged to not only survive, but to thrive!!!

Diz

"Jazz is a gift. If you can hear it, you can have it."

Piano Players: Dick Katz on Erroll Garner

“Unique is an inadequate word to describe Erroll Garner. He was a musical phenomenon unlike any other. One of the most appealing performers in Jazz history, he influenced almost every pianist who played in his era, and even beyond. Self-taught, he could not read music, yet he did things that trained pianists could not play or even imagine. Garner was a one-man swing band, and indeed often acknowledged that his main inspiration was the big bands of the thirties – Duke, Basie, Lunceford, et al. He developed a self-sufficient, extremely full style that was characterized by a rock-steady left-hand that also sounded like a strumming rhythm guitar. Juxtaposed against this was a river of chordal or single note ideas, frequently stated in a lagging, behind-the-beat way that generated terrific swing.” [

Paul Desmond

Cannonball Adderley, who was at one point a rival of Paul's in the various polls and whose robust gospel-drenched playing was worlds apart once said: ‘He is a profoundly beautiful player.’ Writer Nat Hentoff said. "He could put you in a trance, catch you in memory and desire, make you forget the garlic and sapphires in the mud."

Drummers Corner: Larry Bunker on Shelly Manne

“In a truly formal sense, Shelly could barely play the drums. If you gave him a pair of sticks and a snare drum and had him play rudi­ments—an open and closed roll, paradiddles, and all that kind of thing—he didn't sound like much. He never had that kind of training and wasn't inter­ested in it. For him it was a matter of playing the drums with the music. He could play more music in four bars than almost anyone else. His drums sounded gorgeous. They recorded sensationally. All you had to hear was three or four bars and you knew it was Shelly Manne. - Larry Bunker, Jazz drummer and premier, studio percussionist

The 1954 Birdland Recordings of Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers

The 1954 Birdland recordings on Blue Note provided the stylistic foundation for the rest of Art Blakey's career. His style had completely crystallized. His pulsation was undeniable, a natural force; the counter-rhythms he brought to the mix made what he played that much more affecting. There was a purity about what he did—and always motion. He was spontaneous, free, creating every minute. That he was in the company of peers, all performing in an admirable manner, had a lot to do with making this "on-the-spot" session such an important musical document. The band never stops burning. The exhilarating Clifford Brown moves undaunted through material, fast, slow, in between, playing fantastic, well-phrased ideas that unfold in an unbroken stream. His technique, almost perfect; his sound, burnished. He's a gift to the senses. Lou Donaldson, an underrated alto player in the Bird tradition, offers much to think about while you're tapping your foot. Horace Silver is crucial to the effect of this music, much of it his own. Certainly the rhythms that inform his piano playing and writing make it all the more soulful. On this and other records he serves as a catalytic agent, provoking swing and engaging intensity. Hard-hitting, unpretentious, communicative, Silver has little use for compositional elements or piano techniques that impede his message. A live-in pulse permeates his music and his playing, strongly affecting the shape, content, and level of excitement of his performances and those of his colleagues. An original and tellingly economic amalgam of Parker, the blues, shuffling dance rhythms, and a taste of the black church for flavor, Silver is quite undeniable. Listen to his delightful "Quicksilver" on A Night at Birdland With the Art Blakey Quintet, Vol. 1 (Blue Note). It capsulizes what he does. On this album, Curly Russell shows once again he can play "up" tempos and interesting changes. He ties in well with Blakey. But Silver and Blakey, in combination, determine the rhythmic disposition of the music. Blakey's natural time and fire raise the heat to an explosive level before the listener realizes how hot the fire has become. Perhaps more than other recordings Blakey has made, the Birdland session documents his great strengths and technical failings. At almost every turn, he shows what an enviably well coordinated, buoyantly confident, rhythmically discerning player he is.

BOP AND DRUMS—A NEW WORLD

From the Introduction to Burt Korall, “Drummin’ Men: The Bebop Years”

“It is difficult for young musicians and jazz devotees to fully comprehend the tumultuous effect that the advent of bop had on drummers. The new music demanded new, relevant, trigger-fast, musical, well-placed reactions from the person behind the drum set—an entirely revamped view of time and rhythm, techniques, and musical attitudes.

How well did drummers deal with bop? The innovators, like Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, opened the path and showed how it was done. Young disciples—if they had talent, sensitivity, and the necessary instincts— caught on and made contributions. Other drummers stylistically modified the way they played, trying to combine the old with the new. This was tricky at best. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it was a matter of apples and oranges. Still others fought change and what it implied.

Not welcomed by many swing drummers and their more traditional predecessors, the new wave was looked upon as the enemy, sources of disruption and unnecessary noise. Those stuck in the past could not accept breaking time, using the drum set as both color resource and time center. The structural and emotional differences essential to bebop, the need for virtuosity, and the ability to think quickly and perform appropriately intimidated them. The demands of the music were strange and often devastating; a feeling of hostility built up in them. The basic reasons were quite clear. The new music could ultimately challenge their earning ability and position in the drum hierarchy."

Gerry Mulligan 1927-1996

“… Gerry Mulligan lived through almost the entire history of jazz. It is against that background that he should be understood.” – Gene Lees

Gunther Schuller on Sonny Rollins

“Rhythmically, Rollins is as imaginative and strong as in his melodic concepts. And why not? The two are really inseparable, or at least should be. In his recordings as well as during several evenings at Birdland recently [Fall/1958] Rollins indicated that he can probably take any rhythmic formation and make it swing. This ability enables him to run the gamut of extremes— from almost a whole chorus of non-syncopated quarter notes (which in other hands might be just naive and square but through Rollins' sense of humor and superb timing are transformed into a swinging line) to asymmetrical groupings of fives and sevens or between the-beat rhythms that defy notation. As for his imagination, it is prodigiously fertile. And indeed I can think of no better and more irrefutable proof of the fact that discipline and thought do not necessarily result in cold or un-swinging music than a typical Rollins performance. No one swings more (hard or gentle) and is more passionate in his musical expression than Sonny Rollins . It ultimately boils down to how much talent an artist has; the greater the demands of his art both emotionally and intellectually the greater the talent necessary.”

Artie Shaw on Louis Armstrong as told to Gene Lees

Artie said, "You are too young to know the impact Louis had in the 1920s," he said. "By the time you were old enough to appreciate Louis, you had been hearing those who derived from him. You cannot imagine how radical he was to all of us. Revolutionary. He defined not only how you play a trumpet solo but how you play a solo on any instrument. Had Louis Armstrong never lived, I suppose there would be a jazz, but it would be very different."

Pops

Bill Crow on Louis Amstrong

Louis Armstrong transformed jazz. He played with a strength and inventiveness that illuminated every jazz musician that heard his music. Louis was able to do things on the trumpet that had previously been considered impossible. His tone and range and phrasing became criteria by which other jazz musicians measured themselves. He established the basic vocabulary of jazz phrases, and his work became the foundation of every jazz musician who followed him.

Bassist Eddie Gomez on Pianist Bill Evans

“Bill's music is profoundly expressive. It is passionate, intellectual, and without pretense. Eleven years with his trio afforded me the opportunity to perform, record, travel, and most importantly learn. My development as an artist is largely due to his encouragement, support, and patience. He instilled confidence in me, while at the same time urging me to search for my own voice and for new ways to make the music vital and creative. And Bill believed that repertoire, both new and old, would organically flourish in repeated live performance. In fact, there were precious few rehearsals, even before recording sessions. … When Bill passed away late in 1980, it was clear that all of us in the jazz world had sustained a huge loss. I was shocked and saddened; in my heart I had always felt that some day there would be a reunion concert. Had I been able to look into a crystal ball and foresee his death, perhaps I might have stayed in the trio for a longer period. I still dream about one more set with Bill. He closes his eyes, turns his head to one side, and every heartfelt note seems etched and bathed in gold. How I miss that sound.”

John Coltrane on Stan Getz

Coltrane himself said of the mellifluous Stan Getz, "Let's face it--we'd all sound like that if we could."

Peter Bernstein on Bobby Hutcherson

I got to play with Bobby Hutcherson at Dizzy's a few years ago, which ended up on a CD [2012's Somewhere In The Night on Kind of Blue Records]. I was four feet away from him, thinking, "How is this man just hitting metal bars with wooden sticks with cotton on the end and making such an expressive statement?" The instrument is just like ... it's him! He's imbuing it with his thoughts and feelings. That's a miraculous thing. The instrument itself disappears when you're talking about a master on that level.

Ralph Bowen

“In a way, the entire act of music is mind put into sound. It has to go through some sort of physical medium in order to be heard. I chose the saxophone, but the whole issue is to have such control over the instrument and over what you hear that the instrument physically doesn't get in the way of visualizing sound. Technique to me means dealing with an instrument in the most efficient manner possible so that it's no more than peripheral to expression."